


Error Codes

by Mynameisdoubleg



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Classic Battletech (Tabletop RPG)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynameisdoubleg/pseuds/Mynameisdoubleg
Summary: People and machines are similar in some ways, both running on programming, be it biological or digital. Sometimes though that programming gets corrupted, and it's up to technicians to fix the flaws.





	Error Codes

_Suborbital Flight CNC-GAL-03_

_Galatea_

_Lyran Commonwealth_

_31 March, 3022_

( _Our universe is kept in motion by things we cannot see and rarely appreciate. Hanging over the world from these angelic heights, you can appreciate that. All that cosmic engineering we take for granted is on display outside the windows—everything becomes motion and mass and gravity. The world spins, the moon orbits, the stars dance. Clouds become stippled frosting on that great glazed surface of the world beneath you. The atmosphere, the air we breathe, that’s just a faint blue icing around the edges. Gives you a little perspective._

_There was a man on the flight who gave me a little perspective, too. The Cone City-Galaport sub-orb hop is an expensive flight, which means the 20-person passenger cabin is mostly packed with mercenary commanders, their agents, aristos, politicos, business bigwigs or ComStar reps. This one guy, though, looked out of place. Wearing workman’s clothes, almost ostentatious in their lack of flash. He was on his own at the back of the V22 Arcjet, an empty seat next to him on an otherwise sold-out flight, paying no attention to the display out the window the way everyone else was, just focused on this dataslate in his hand. There was a gravity to him that pulled the eye, like he was made of some denser material than the rest of us, as though it was the weight of him at the back rather than the thrusters that was tipping the jet’s tail down and nose up._

_When we leveled out at 100K I got up, went over, introduced myself. He took my card and studied it with a kind of grave intensity before filing it away and inviting me to sit in the empty seat._ A war correspondent? _he asked, with a kind of modest shrug._ I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m a Tech, not a warrior. I don’t think I know the kinds of stories your readers would want to hear. _Turned out his name was Iwan Rees, Chief Technician in a group of mercenary BattleMech Techs-for-hire called the Cross Wires_.

 _I told him it was okay, not every conversation leads to a story. I remarked on the way he was ignoring the scenery, and shared my thoughts on getting a glimpse into the hidden cosmic clockwork that keeps the universe running. He got a kind of faraway look for a minute, and when his mind came back from wherever it had wandered, he said to me,_ Well if that’s the kind of thing that interests you, maybe there is a story I could share.

 _This is what he told me._ )

Want to know what one single thing has killed more MechWarriors in history than any other weapon? Might not be what you think. It isn’t the smoothbore autocannon. It isn’t the particle projector cannon. Amazingly enough, it isn’t even the incompetence of their own officers.

Nope.

Two words: Error codes.

On the battlefield, the BattleMech is a thing of holy bloody terror. Here’s the catch though—it’s got to actually get to the battlefield first. All it takes is one little glitch to turn the whole thing into a 60-ton deathtrap. Your average harbinger of destruction has the most powerful energy source humanity has ever developed, dozens of megawattage weapons, tons of ceramet armor, thousands of sensors and gyrostabilizers and actuators and other components, kilometers of wiring, entire libraries of digital code, every single one of which is just waiting, begging, absolutely dying for its chance to fail at the worst possible moment.

And that’s just when the thing rolled off the production line. Giant tin cans these days have an average age that makes an old-age home on planet Methuselah look spry. Pretty much every machine on the battlefields today is like the Ship of Theseus, it’s had every piece of it blown off, crushed, smashed, melted or just plain fried, salvaged, repaired, rebuilt and stuck back together again at least half a dozen times until there’s not a scrap of the original left. The OS has been edited, rewritten, recompiled, upgraded, debugged to fix all the problems of the ‘upgrade’, debugged again to fix the problems cause by the last debugging. Probably 50% of it is pure junk, useless code, while another 40% is workarounds to stop the junk from interfering with the remaining 10% that’s actually trying to do its job.

It’s a miracle any of these things are able to walk, much less fight.

That’s where we come in. Every Tech out there is a combination of nuclear, electrical, mechanical, robotics, mechatronics and computer engineer, not to mention a diplomat, director, virtuoso composer and inspired improv artist. People moan and complain about LosTech, well, the reason we can still do anything at all is because of the Techs who figured out ways to keep things running. Lose your MechWarriors, and there are always a thousand more kids lining up to take their place. Lose your Techs, and your whole unit might as well give up and go home.

First job I got after forming the Cross Wires was for this little merc outfit, one lance weak, called ... oh jeez, what were they? Bradley’s Buffoons or something. Benjamin’s Bumblers. We took a job with them, they took a job for a quick smash’n’grab raid, the planet’s defenders took them to the cleaners. Ambushed and wiped them out while they were still _en route_ to the target.

I didn’t see any of the action, of course. I and the other Techs were waiting at the forward field base, ready to patch up anybody who came limping back from the action. We figured things had gone pretty 404 when the comms got really excited and then went dead. I told my team to start packing, but before we could get too far this CDA-2A comes stomping into camp. The CDA, what folks call a _Cicada_ , tops out at 129 kay-pee-aitch, making it the fastest medium out there, hell, fastest thing this side of a _Locust_ , and this one must’ve sprinted straight from the battlefield to swoop down on the baggage train.

For most folks, having 40 tons of death machine bearing down on you at highway speeds can just ruin your day, but I wasn’t too worried. I could see this one was just in a sorry state. You wouldn’t believe some of the abuse these mercs put their babies through: Armor plates pitted and rusted around the edges, those old HartfordCo heat sinks half-melted, actuators wailing like a heavy metal funeral. Only thing in working order on it was the paint job—black with this serpentine red dragon, its head above the cockpit a coiling around the body and down one leg.

That was the ’Mech of Fabian “Fire” Drake. You haven’t heard of him, for reasons that will become apparent, but back in the day he was hell on steel heels. A real brawler, he’d kick, shoulder-charge, use his mass to just flatten any _Wasp_ or _Stinger_ or _Commando_ that got in his way. Look him up when we get to Galaport. He was just starting out back then, but was already an ace, racking up a handful of scout kills.

Well, Fabian walks his _Cicada_ right into the middle of the camp, rotates the two wing Magnas so they’re pointing at me and my crew, and starts giving orders. “Listen up, grease monkeys,” he says over the ’Mech’s PA system. “Your unit just got swept off the battlefield and into the garbage can of history. You are all now property of Fabian’s Firedrakes. So play nice or you’ll join them. Down tools and line up for inspection.”

The crew looks at me. My number two, guy named Carnehan, asks me “What do we do, chief?”

I fold my arms and say, “We wait.”

Most of the time, Techs get treated like, well, like Fabian was treating us just then. Like property, or indentured servants, like serfs or slaves. Do this, do that, fix this, repair that, hurry up, all with little pay, fewer benefits, Unity, barely any recognition that you’re not a machine yourself. I saw my chance to put a stop to that.

Fabian starts getting riled, didn’t-you-hear-what-I-said stuff, this-is-your-last-warning and blah, blah, blah, but dealing with MechWarriors is like dealing with wild animals. Don’t let them smell your fear. Stand your ground. They need us more than we need them.

Fabian fires his lasers at the ground, carves a double line of white-hot rock right at my feet, close enough that I can feel the heat, like opening an oven door. But I’m not moving. See, he’s a merc. Mercenaries fight for pay, but they live on salvage, and with the Buffoons’ ’Mechs out of action right now I and the other 11 Techs are collectively the most valuable plunder on the planet.

“You get that out of your system yet?” I yell up at him. “If we’re done with the theatrics, you can come down here and we can talk business.”

Sure enough, Fabian pops the hatch, unrolls the ladder and drops down. A lean and hard man, hair razored to stubble, getting on for zero percent body fat, like he’d discarded every part of his body and soul that wasn’t needed for the job. Eyes that sparked like PPCs, with a temper hot enough to power an _Atlas_.

Fabian comes striding over, hand clamped on the butt of his pistol, though at least he kept it holstered. He stops almost nose to nose with me, seething, breathing hard, “Gimmie one good reason I shouldn’t pop you one between the eyes to teach the rest of these mech-geeks a lesson?”

“Because you are probably one error code away from having that big ole contraption up there spontaneously power down or blow itself up,” I tell him. “HartfordCo heat sinks, right? Buddy, those things are getting on for three hundred years old and it’s a wonder they haven’t failed on you yet. And when they do, they’ll shut down and you’ll turn into 40 tons of target practice in the middle of a firefight, or if you slap in enough overrides, they’ll let the heat build up until it blows the engine, and you, somewhere into the stratosphere.”

He hesitates, and I know I’ve got him. For all their swagger, even the lowest, scummiest, most disreputable mercenary MechWarrior is no idiot. Despite what the media will show you—no offense—you don’t become the pilot of the most physically and mentally demanding war machines in existence by posing on the cover of e-trade mags in oversized sunnies and a bandanna. “So?” he challenges me but the edge is gone, which is code for: Make him an offer.

“We can do you a 3C field refit,” I say to him, rubbing my hands, getting warmed up. This is what it’s about. I brush past him, not caring about the gun anymore, start pointing at places on his ’Mech. “Total OS rewrite, swap out that 320 for a VOX 280 from an OTT or ASN, replace the HartfordCo cooling system, dump the Magnas and stick a Donal or Lord’s Light PPC on the side. You’ll lose a little speed, but it’ll turn you into a bona fide scout killer or hit-and-run raider rather than an oversized, overpriced _Locust_ wannabe.”

Oh, I can see he likes that idea. He follows me, stands beside me, looking up at the ’Mech together with me, no longer gripping the pistol, but rubbing a thumb along the bottom of his chin, thinking, visualizing, liking what he sees. “You can do that?” he asks, then remembers the tough-guy persona, scowls. “You’d better, or I’ll—”

“I can do that,” I say. I know I can, and he hears that certainty in my voice, stops his idle threats. “My team and I can do more than that, if we can work a deal. We can give you the smoothest-running war machine in the sector. The chance to work with the best Tech team this side of Terra, that’s what I’m offering you. Question is, what can you offer in return?”

The scowl freezes for a second, then lifts, replaced with a grin. Fabian sees himself as a rebel, a no-rules hellraiser, and it flatters him to think he attracts like-minded people. “The chance to work with the hottest MechJock in the whole damn Inner Sphere,” he says, and sticks out a hand.

We shake. It’s a deal, and the start of a great friendship. A terrible friendship.

There’s an old quote from Napoleon: Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals discuss logistics. There were plenty of amateurs out there, but with my team behind them, the Firedrakes had the most professional merc unit in the coreward periphery.

The way the system used to work was bandits and pirates would hit a world, the local militia boys would flail around and fail to stop them, over and over like an IF/THEN loop with no exit condition. Well, we crashed that little program. The Firedrakes would be up against pirate bands with multiply-rebuilt junkyard rejects that could barely walk or shoot straight and run circles around them. Fabian made the Silent Swarm scream, easily trumped Akira’s Aces and brought the Scarlett Fever down without breaking a sweat.

The unit grew to six light and fast ’Mechs, including Fabian’s _Cicada_ plus an _Assassin_ , a _Jenner_ , an _Ostcout_ , a _Spider_ and a _Locust_ , all of them modified by my team. We did a 1E on the _Locust_ , packed its arms with laser weapons pods, added an ejection system to the _Spider_ (none are installed on the factory model), switched the ASN’s Holly-2 for more short-range firepower. Ironed out a glitch in the _Jenner_ ’s cooling system that was keeping it running hot. When the _Ostscout_ lost a leg on Erewhon, we were the ones who rebuilt the hip joint, reattached the limb and had it back in action in less than 24 hours.

Fabian would come by, in the early days, full of sharp smiles and dagger jokes. “What are you doing to my babies?” he sighs theatrically one day, stepping over rivers of myomer fibers with his hands spread, taking in the hundreds of parts scattered across the ’Mech Bay floor as we try to find out what’s wrong with the ASN’s Martell.

“Trying to keep you alive,” I say. “Unity knows why.”

“Aw, Rees, because I keep life interesting,” he flashes an impish smile.

“This is obviously some new definition of the word ‘interesting’ I haven’t encountered before.” I can’t help but smile back. He does keep life interesting. His recklessness and disregard for safety also drive me crazy, but I’ve never been more in my element, never been surer that I was where I needed to be, doing what I was meant to do. See, Drake talked to us Techs, treated us like part of the team. Like people.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Wasn’t. Turns out, success is sometimes the last thing people need.

On Bone-Norman, the Firedrakes were tasked with hunting down the Wylde Bunch, a band of heavily-armed slavers from Last Chance who had hit a couple of hospitals on the outskirts of Red Stone City and abducted a handful of doctors, MedTechs and other staff.

Couple of hours after they set off, Fabian’s CDA comes limping back to base, leaking and leaving a trail of viscous pink glycol behind it like melted candle wax. The armor’s cracked and cratered by shell hits, burned black where lasers had traced wavering, squiggled lines across its hull. Ah, being a Tech is like being a sports doctor who has to watch his boxer clients get their faces rearranged on a weekly basis. We bandage their ceramet skin, set titanium bones, stay up all night until their digital fevers come down, all the while knowing they’re going to go out and do the same damn thing as soon as they’re better.

As I wait on the scaffolding in the ’Mech bay, hands on hips, Fabian gets the _Cicada_ settled in its cradle, pops the hatch and clambers on top of the hull, looking only slightly less beat up than his ride. He’s buzzing like a misaligned PPC, throwing off bad humor like a static charge.

“I keep hoping that one of these days you’re going to come back from a mission with fewer than a hundred things that need fixing,” I tell him lightly, trying to change the mood.

“I keep hoping you’re actually going to fix them rather than slapping on more duct tape,” he snorts.

“Oh sure, I’ll get right on that, no problem, LosTech, what’s that? Pfft. Let me introduce you to this thing called the 31st century, Fabian. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“The year is just a number,” he scoffs, slipping down to land beside me, peeling off his gloves and slapping them into my waiting hand. “It’s still the 25th century to the Azami, the 36th century for Buddhists, the 68th century for the Jews, and time-to-stop-moaning o’clock for Techs.”

“Only time you need to worry about a Tech is when he stops complaining,” I tell him. “I assume you tamed the Wylde Bunch, or is that a silly question?”

“We got the job done,” he grunts, good mood suddenly gone, and starts to clamber down the scaffolding about the ’Mech.

“And the civilians?” I call after him, getting a little worried now.

“I said we got the job done, didn’t I?” he snaps, and slides down the ladder to the ground, leaving me at the top of the scaffolding wondering what the hell just happened. Didn’t have too much time to brood on it, as Fabian and the rest of the unit’s rides all needed some serious work, so I kind of lost myself in that and forgot about the conversation.

I ran a diagnostic, returned a few error codes, found a couple of systems that needed a look-see. Couple of B grade errors, bunch of C’s. It was a good feeling, working through those, ticking them off, gave you a real sense of accomplishment: Cutting free damaged armor panels; getting new ones fitted and installed, recalibrating sensors; testing, removing, cleaning and reinstalling actuators and servomotors; debugging the computer system. Took until almost local midnight.

I take the crew out to a bar just off-base to celebrate the end of the day’s work. Place called Refragger, popular with technical support crews. Walls’re painted like printed circuit boards, light fixtures look like oversize data crystals, got these remote-control drones instead of waiters to bring the drinks. It’s maybe 50/50 military types, both us and Commonwealth, then other half civvie. I offer to buy Carnehan and the other guys a round, and with my ears still ringing from the cheers, make my way over to the bar.

There’s a local there, tough-looking guy, takes a look of my uniform and doesn’t like what he sees.

“You work for Fabian’s Firedrakes?” he asks me.

“More like he works for me,” I say, flippant, and next thing I know the guy takes a swing at me and my forehead’s saying hello to a bar stool shortly before the rest of me says hello to the floor.

Couple of Lyran militia boys came in and broke things up before they can get real ugly, held the short-circuited pugilist and his friends back, threw them out of the place. One Lyran helps me to my feet. “What was all that about?” I ask him.

He kind of gives me a hard look and says, “What do you think?” When I look blank, he says, “Haven’t you heard?” and when I give him a well-no-otherwise-I-wouldn’t-be-asking look, says, “You will soon. It’ll be all over the news tomorrow.”

It sure was. The biggest and only items on every newscast on the planet. I’m on a chair in the break room back at base, still icing my eye, staring at the news reports. Turns out, Fabian’s Firedrakes did not rescue the hostages. Not a one of them. Oh they caught up to the Wylde Bunch easily enough. Hovertanks are fast, but only on flat and level ground, while there’s no terrain in the galaxy that gets in the way of a light BattleMech with rockets on its feet. The _Assassin_ , _Jenner_ , _Spider_ and _Ostie_ used their jets to hop the terrain, cut the Bunch off from their DropShip while Fabian and the _Locust_ closed from behind. The Bunch laagered at the top of a hill, Saracen and Scimitar hovertanks making an outer ring, with transports and the hostages in the center.

Fabian got the _Assassin_ to bombard them from one flank, then when the Bunch were distracted, charged the opposite side of the camp with all five of the other ’Mechs. Burst into the middle of the ring, firing at everything that moved. Wasn’t clear who blasted the transports with the hostages, the Bunch, the Firedrakes or just some random unlucky shot, caught in the chaotic crossfire that followed, but the result was the same—just bluescreened the whole lot of them.

That was the first glitch in the program Fabian and I had been running on. I rationalized it at the time—heat of battle, fog of war, everyone has bad days, all that stuff—but it bugged me. Like a minor error in the code, unnoticed at first, but a small error that causes other, bigger errors, which then propagate throughout the system, crashing more and more systems, until you’ve got an unstoppable cascade failure. Why’d he done it? Had winning meant more to him than the lives of all those people? It bugged me.

Fabian started to enjoy his reputation a little too much, letting it define him. There was a retaliatory raid on Last Chance. The Firedrakes chased a pirate band into an urban area, then blasted half the town to pieces digging them out. And I think to myself, was that needed, necessary or even helpful?

Next contract was garrison duty on Anywhere. Couple months in, Fabian’s got a flash new ground car, a private pad off-base, and I’m starting to wonder where all this stuff is coming from. I mean, I could guess where it was coming from, but I didn’t want to look too close. I was a digital ostrich, sticking my head in a mainframe and pretending I couldn’t calculate the obvious answer. The people who had cheered us when we arrived, showered us in flower petals as we paraded down the streets, now watched us darkly from shadowed doors and windows, and changed directions if they saw you coming. When we left for our next contract, the streets and starport were deserted.

Then on to Bensinger. A peaceful world of craftsmen and artisans, technicians and engineers. By now, Fabian’s so used to being showered with thanks and praise and gifts, he got to expect them. Demand them. Felt he deserved to be treated like royalty, just for being who he was. And when the people of Bensinger wouldn’t, that made him mad. Real mad.

Coming back from a patrol, Fabian decides to use the main highway out of town. Most of the civvies see him coming and pull off to the side. Brought the whole city’s traffic to a standstill. But then, this one guy. This one stubborn guy, don’t know what was going through his head, stress at work, felt he had to man up or some macho thing or what, but this one guy stops his car in the middle of the road and does not budge. Does not move when the _Cicada_ comes bearing down on him. And Fabian fires. PPC bolt goes straight through the windshield. Car noses down under the impact of the blast, then the whole vehicle is blown three meters into the air when the fuel tank goes.

Wasn’t just one guy in there. Family of four. There were protests, thousands of people in the streets, then tens of thousands. From the command center, Fabian takes one look at the monitor feeds, at the crowds outside the base gates, and gets that scowl on his face. He turns to me and says, “Get the ’Mechs prepped. We’re going out there.”

My brain is throwing up enough error codes to short-circuit my nervous system. I can’t move, can’t speak. I just know that going out there is the worst possible thing Fabian could do at this point. For himself. For the people of this planet. For me. If I’m honest, most especially for me.

Fabian’s already moving though, taking my silence for acceptance, and by the time I trail into the ’Mech Bay I can hear shouting. Fabian is there, face to face with Carnehan, remember him? One of the senior Techs, a guy who’d been with me since the start. Carnehan’s got a duffel bag on the floor and a stubborn look on his face, and Fabian is blocking him and got his hand on his gun, just like he did the day I met him. They look up when I come in.

“I’m leaving, Rees,” Carnehan says to me, ignoring Fabian. “This is how bandits and pirates start. A BattleMech makes them think they’re kings, that the law of the stars is the law of the jungle and they’ve a right to anything people can’t stop them from taking. Well, I’m not going to help you go down that road. You’ll have to find your own way without me.”

I raise two placating hands. “Come on now, Carnie, you know it’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

Fabian draws his gun, aims it and cocks it with a menacing click. “Get back to work Carnehan,” he tells him.

“Just a minute now, Carnie, let’s talk this out,” I say to him, then to Fabian: “Put the gun down, you’re not going to shoot anyone.”

“Aren’t I?”

Fabian doesn’t move, the gun doesn’t waver. Carnehan looks at me, shakes his head a little and snorts in disgust. Shoulders his duffel bag and tries to push past Fabian.

There’s a gunshot. Carnehan falls through the shocked silence that follows it.

I remember the day I met Fabian. I remember his bluster and bravado, what seemed to me then just the brittle pride and wild energy of youth, and I see how that’s changed and grown and festered. He hadn’t shot, back then. He had now. Instead of being tempered with experience or humbled by failure, he had—with my help—only reinforced his earlier faith in his own infallibility. The man who once saw us as people now treated us like machines. Maybe in fixing his BattleMech, I’d helped to break this man.

Worse, I killed Carnehan, just as sure as Fabian did. This was at least partly my fault. It was up to me to fix it.

“Fabian,” I start to say, not knowing how I could finish that sentence.

“Stow it Rees, I don’t want to hear it. You keep the ’Mechs running, you leave the rest to me,” he snaps, ending the conversation. Everyone in the ’Mech Bay is staring at him. “The frack are you looking at? Get back to work, I said!” he screams, and people duck their heads and try to look busy. “That goes for you too, Rees. I want my ’Mech ready to go in an hour. Or.” He’s still got the gun in his hand, and I can still smell the gunsmoke, taste it in my mouth.

We all like to think that if it came to it, we could be heroes. That it would be clear what the right thing to do is, and we’d all do it. Not just any heroes, mind you, we’d be the big splashy type, with lives saved, history changed, humanity’s great error codes fixed—if we’d been on Terra we’d have told Amaris to stick it, if we’d been on Kentares we’d have mutinied. Well. I’ve been there. And it isn’t easy, not one bit. Easier just to let the error codes go than try to fix them.

If I said anything, I don’t remember what it was. Still processing, I think, still in shock. No idea how I make this right again. Somebody comes to take Carnehan away, not looking at him, not looking at me. I clamber up to the cockpit on autopilot, and let me tell you, it never seemed so far as it did that day. I felt about as slow as a UMR and twice as useless.

I crawled into the cockpit, sat in the seat, his seat, opened up the battle computer’s diagnostic port and plugged in the Mexscan reader. Booted up the program and waited for it to do its thing. Didn’t need to watch it so I just kind of stared out the cockpit windows, watched the rest of the crew doing their jobs. Akimov and Harris replacing an armor panel on the lower right leg. Randall, Fidgit and Wally recalibrating the left hip actuator. Good, hard-working guys. Didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.

There’s a ping from the Mexscan and I look down.

Little message pops up on the screen: ERROR CODE P-C010-A99.

First part is the system. P in this case is for power, meaning the reactor. Next part is the subsystem. C010 is the engine’s plasma containment system. Last is the specific fault. The first letter is the threat level. A is the highest. Then comes the 99, a catch-all for an unknown or unidentifiable error, which means the system has been unable to establish a connection with the containment system. The magnetic containment coils might be working, they might not, but they weren’t talking to the battle computer.

I sat there, looking at the screen, thinking about what it meant.

What it meant was, there was something like a 50/50 chance the ’Mech would blow itself to bits at any moment the next time it was switched on. If the coils fail, if the 10,000-degree plasma touches the fusion chamber walls ... well. It wouldn’t quite go up in a nuclear fireball, but it would be a pretty spectacular bang.

Don’t know how long I sat there, but the next thing I’m aware of is Fabian shouting up at me. “Aren’t you done yet, Rees?”

I look out the cockpit window, down at the ground, at the man I’d thought of as a friend. I look back at the screen. At the Error Code.

With a sudden movement that’s almost like a convulsion, I unplug the Mexscan from the battle computer. I’ve gone blind, my fingers find the connectors on their own, just yank them violently out. Push a few buttons. Select data entry, delete, are you sure, yes. Yes I am. Fumble for the power switch, kill it. Then out of the cockpit, without looking at Fabian, go down the gantry guided by unseeing hands, all the way down, ground my feet.

I wipe my hands on my overalls and say, “Yeah, we’re done here.”

( _His story over, Rees returned to his dataslate._ I get it, _I tell him._ Modern war relies on the people behind the scenes, the Techs and Astechs and all the other logistics. It’s like gravity, a hidden force that moves the world.

 _He kind of smiles sadly to himself and says,_ Yeah, maybe that’s part of it _._ )


End file.
